23 July 2024

Ray Anthony Band Leader Age 102 Not Out – Phantom Dancer

Greg Poppleton Phantom Dancer

Ray Anthony, bandleader, trumpeter, songwriter and actor, is the last living member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Born 20 January 1922, he is now 102 and a half years old. Ray Anthony is your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Ray Anthony’s 100th, “On Jan. 20, Anthony celebrated his 100th birthday surrounded by friends and Perry Anthony, his lone descendant, a son from his brief marriage to actress Mamie Van Doren. Anthony’s Hollywood Hills property remains as he envisioned it in 1975, complete with lush carpets, a sunken dining room and a view of the ocean, weather permitting. Amid balloons shaped like the number “100” and the arrival of a pizza adorned with the number inscribed in olives, Anthony remarked that “they really wanted to remind me of my age!”

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 23 July) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

RAY

Ray Anthony played trumpet in the Glenn Miller Orchestra from 1940 to 1941.

Quoting the Los Angeles Times, “After his father handed 5-year-old Ray Anthony a trumpet in their Cleveland home, he was hooked on the horn, eventually becoming a teenage disciple of Harry James, the jazz trumpet-playing actor-bandleader who was only a half-dozen years older than him. While still a teenager, Anthony found himself thrust into the big time as a member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, a cocky brassman on a bandstand full of world-weary men. He lasted less than two years with the band and was notably fired twice, his strong chops seemingly appealing enough for a second chance but not a third. “Some of the musicians teased me for being so young in the number one band,” recalled Anthony. “He was tough but it’s a business. You don’t have much time to do anything but follow the lines.”

You can see Ray Anthony in the Glenn Miller movie, Sun Valley Serenade.

He joined the U.S. Navy during World War 2. After the war formed his own orchestra.

The Ray Anthony Orchestra was popular in the early 1950s with “The Bunny Hop”, “Hokey Pokey”, and the theme to the radio/television police detective series, Dragnet. It borrowed from the Glenn Miller style.

Anthony’s original compositions include “Thunderbird”, “The Bunny Hop”, “Trumpet Boogie”, “Big Band Boogie”, and “Mr. Anthony’s Boogie”.

In 1952 he had a No. 2 chart hit with  “At Last”:  the highest charting pop version of the song in the U.S.

His 1962 recording “Worried Mind” had high rotation radio airplay.

He had another hit record with the Peter Gunn  theme from the private detective series. It reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart.

In the early 1980s, Anthony formed Big Band ’80s, with other members of the band including Buddy Rich, Harry James, Les Brown, and Alvino Rey.

His later compositions tended to break away from the Big Band jazz style of his earlier days, ranging from MOR and lounge music to blues, film and television themes.

He performed regularly into his 90s.

ON THE TELLY

In 1953, the Ray Anthony Orchestra featured with singers Helen O’Connell and Bob Eberly in a summer replacement program for Perry Como’s CBS television show.

From 1953 to 1954, Anthony was musical director of the television series TV’s Top Tunes.

In 1956–1957 he starred in a short-lived television variety show, The Ray Anthony Show. You can watch two shows with this article. Kellie Greene plays the vibraphone

In the 1959–1960 television season, he guest-starred in the episode “Operation Ramrod” of star David Hedison’s espionage series Five Fingers on NBC.

IN THE FILLUMS

Anthony studied with acting teachers Estelle Harman and Sanford Meisner.

Ray Anthony with his Orchestra appeared in the 1955 musical film Daddy Long Legs starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron.

In 1955 he married actress Mamie Van Doren.

Anthony appeared in the 1950s films The Five Pennies, in which he portrayed Jimmy Dorsey, The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), High School Confidential, as “Bix”, and Girls Town. The last two major motion pictures starred Mamie van Doren.

In 1957, Ray Anthony and his orchestra recorded the musical score for the film, This Could Be The Night.

In the comedy, The Girl Can’t Help It, the LA Times wrote, “In one of the funniest scenes in that movie, Jayne Mansfield, in the middle of a recording session, purchases an apple from a vending machine located inside the recording studio and sits down with the Ray Anthony Orchestra as they bounce through “Rock Around the Rock Pile.” At the close of the tune, Mansfield’s character, whose voice has already shattered glass earlier in the film, leans into the microphone for her part as a wailing police siren. The performances by Little Richard and Eddie Cochran spurred impressionable young musicians like Paul McCartney and John Lennon to pursue their rock ‘n’ roll dreams, but it was Anthony’s box office bankability that helped to sell the film to producers.”